Few
Player, Less Freedom
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=22951
MEDIA:
Fewer Players, Less Freedom
By Miren Gutierrez*
Comcast's failed
66-billion-dollar bid for Disney in February brought
the issue of Big Media to the fore. Now, Viacom, Liberty Media,
Microsoft and even Internet firms like Yahoo! and InterActiveCorp
might
make a play for the firm.
Why should anyone
care?
ROME, Mar 19
(IPS) - Comcast's 66-billion-dollar unsuccessful bid for
Disney in February brought the issue of Big Media to the fore.
To Comcast --
the United States' biggest cable company -- the deal made
sense strategically. With 21 million cable subscribers, Comcast
would
combine its distribution power and technology with Disney's content
businesses, said Brian Roberts, Comcast's president, in a widely
published letter to Disney.
Now that the
bid has failed, Viacom, Liberty Media, Microsoft and even
Internet firms like Yahoo! and InterActiveCorp might make a play
for the
firm.
Why should anyone
care?
"The principal
reason people should care about the increasing
concentration of the media has to do with independent thinking,
freedom
of thought and ideas," says Chuck Lewis, executive director
of the
Centre for Public Integrity, in an e-mail interview.
"The fewer
the outlets for information, the less intellectual range for
political, ideological and other thinking," he adds. "Multiple
sources
of information help us to better assess overall credibility".
"Abraham
Lincoln once said, 'I am a firm believer in the people. If
given the truth, they can meet any national crisis. The great point
is
to bring them the real facts'," adds Lewis.
The marriage
of media content (news, films, TV shows) with media
distribution (TV or radio networks, Internet services and the like)
further increases the control of media barons over the audience,
as they
use their sales power to batter their way into living rooms.
Comcast and
Disney would have followed in others' footsteps.
Apart from Comcast
-- the offspring of a merger in 2001 between a large
cable firm and part of a big telephone company, AT&T Broadband
-- the
other "six big sisters" are:
-·Viacom-CBS-MTV
-·Murdoch-Fox TV-Harper Collins-Weekly Standard-New
York Post-London Times-DirecTV -·GE-NBC-Universal-Vivendi
-·Time-Warner-CNN-AOL -·Disney-ABC-ESPN
In January 2001,
the 165-billion-dollar mega-merger between AOL and Time
Warner became the largest in history.
A union between
Comcast and Disney would have created the biggest
vertically integrated entertainment giant of them all, and would
have
reduced the behemoths' numbers to five.
The web is thicker
than it looks: Microsoft owns 7.4 percent of Comcast;
NBC operates MSNBC in partnership with Microsoft; ESPN, The History
Channel and Lifetime are owned by Disney and Hearst, among others,
while
Disney shares ownership of E! with Comcast, MediaOne and Liberty
Media.
Viacom runs,
with Robert Redford and Universal Studios, the Sundance
Channel, and, with AOL Time Warner, Comedy Central.
It is not a
matter for the United States only.
For example,
in addition to its more than 11.5 million direct broadcast
satellite (DBS) subscribers, Murdoch manages the assets of Hughes
Electronics, DirecTV's parent company, which gave News Corp. increased
clout over programming in Latin America.
Rupert Murdoch's
News Corp/FOX merger with DirecTv in December 2003 was
opposed by many, to no avail.
"News Corp's
Sky Latin America and Hughes Electronics' DirecTv Latin
America (DLA), dominate the DTH (direct to home) sector in Central
and
South America. A News Corp takeover of DirecTv would put effective
control of both platforms in the same hands," commented Steve
Blum, in
an article published in the August-September 2003 issue of 'The
Orbiter', a bulletin that caters to the satellite sector.
Murdoch's empire
includes British Sky Broadcasting and START TV in Asia,
too.
America's first
broadcast network, NBC, owns and operates more than 14
stations, along with CNBC, a business-news network, and Telemundo,
the
nation's second-largest Spanish-language broadcaster. NBC has recently
acquired Bravo, the Arts and Film cable network.
Viacom owns
theatres in Canada (Famous Players) and other places --
United Cinemas International, in partnership with Vivendi, for example.
CNN International
can be seen in 212 countries, with a daily audience of
1 billion globally.
How does all
of this affect concrete media coverage?
"If media
moguls control media content and media distribution, then they
have a lock on the extent and range of diverse views and information,"
says Lewis. "That kind of grip on commercial and political
power is
potentially dangerous for any democracy."
In a 1998 article,
'Coming Distractions', published in the 'Columbia
Journalism Review', Jennifer Glaser wrote, "ABC may be confused:
Sunday
is a day to relax, not to relax journalistic standards. At least
four
times in recent months the network's World News Sunday show has
used its
end-of-the-news feature spot to showcase big-budget flicks of the
parent
company, Disney."
Murdoch's conservative
views have percolated down to 'The New York Post'
and Fox News, which in an article by Fair -- a watchdog group that
tackles media bias -- was recently branded "the most biased
name in
news" for its conservative slant.
In his books,
'Rich Media, Poor Democracy' and 'The Problem With the
Media', Robert W. McChesney, research professor at the U.S. University
of Illinois, argues that the major beneficiaries of the so-called
Information Age are a select group of wealthy owners and investors,
advertisers and a handful of enormous media, computer and
telecommunications corporations.
"(The big
media) are not neutral observers," he says in a telephone
interview.
Outside the
United States their coverage of global economic phenomena is
prejudiced, because they are interested in having "minimal
local
interference" in their quest to take advantage of cheap labour
and free
markets. That is why, McChesney adds, big media depict any criticism
contrary to neo-liberal policies as "irrational fears".
In the United
States, media corporations want to, "make sure that the
media policy questions are not understood by the public à
that they are
discussed behind closed doors. There is a deliberate effort in making
sure there is no sustained press coverage of these issues,"
according to
McChesney.
Another telling
example, according to another article published by Fair
in its March-April 2003 issue, is 'Reliable Sources', a CNN programme.
"With a
large majority of 'Reliable Sources' guests (around 76 percent)
depending on media corporations for their livelihoods, the show's
guest
list makes it unlikely that many hard-hitting criticisms of the
news
industry itself will be heard."
"More guests
were drawn from the host's two employers -- the 'Washington
Post' (24 guests) and CNN (22) -- than from any other mainstream
media
outlets. 'Newsweek', another property owned by the Post, provided
11
guests, followed by 'Time' (7), the 'New York Times' (6) and 'New
York
Magazine' (6)," says the article.
One infamous
U.S. case of media concentration is that of Clear Channel,
which now owns more than 1,200 radio stations in the nation.
"A couple
years ago, there was a chemical spill in a small town in South
Dakota. Authorities wanted to alert the local community about the
toxic
fumes and related dangers, and contacted the local radio stations,"
says
Lewis.
"But they
were owned by a national company, Clear Channel, which had no
staff locally, and no local news or public affairs programming.
So local
citizens could not be alerted about a real public health and safety
subject via the airwaves in that municipality."
Media concentration
is a global phenomenon.
Grupo Prisa
is Spain's largest media conglomerate, best known for 'El
País', the country's leading paper, but also encompassing
over 400 radio
stations in Spain and Latin America, along with magazine and book
publishing, press distribution, marketing, rights management, television
broadcasting and production, film, video and music recording interests.
It has stakes
or controls media in Mexico, Panama, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Brazil, Venezuela and the United States.
With Telefónica
and Vivendi, Prisa controls Sogecable, whose principal
areas of business are terrestrial television (Canal+ analogue) and
direct-to-home satellite pay television services (Canal Satélite
Digital).
When Vía
Digital (the second pay TV operator in Spain and part of the
business controlled by Telefónica at the time) merged with
Sogecable in
2002, many considered it a threat to competition. The new company
would
control a combined market share of about 80 percent of subscribers.
A senior editor
at 'El País' admitted to IPS in an off the record
conversation that the paper's coverage of the deal had been partial.
Can or should
regulators do something to protect diversity and
journalistic standards?
In the United
States, "it is fair to note that federal regulatory
agencies are often captured by the powerful interests they have
been
established to oversee," says Lewis.
"When a
federal agency such as the FCC (Federal Communications
Commission) accepts 2,500 all-expense-paid trips from the industry
it is
supposed to regulate, as my centre disclosed in May 2003 on our
Web
site, such a conflict of interest casts a pall over any regulatory
decision."
Regulators did
nothing to block the merger of Disney and Comcast. But
because of Comcast's bid, Disney's share price increased steeply,
and
made the deal too expensive for the former; thus the move failed.
"The generally
held wisdom in the U.S. is that media monopolies will
continue to grow as long as the FCC allows it to happen, which has
been
the essential pattern for the past two decades," says Lewis.
"If there
is one thing we all have been reminded of in the past couple
years, it is that capitalism cannot function without democracy,"
he adds.
"As we
have seen with the Enron, Worldcom and many other recent business
scandals, unmitigated greed and fraud not only are economically
destructive, they undermine consumer and investor confidence and
trust
in general."
"Why would
one sector of the economy, the media corporations, receive
special dispensation, and be given essentially carte blanche?"
asks Lewis.
"Media
corporations already enjoy a disproportionate amount of political
power, for not only do they attempt to influence the public policy
process like everyone else -¡ with campaign contributions,
free trips,
lobbying ¡- they actually control whether or not a politician's
face or
voice is on the airwaves. Now, that is real power!"
According to
McChesney, media moguls have an interest in pushing the
idea that the current concentration in the industry is the result
of
free market forces, instead of the consequence of "explicit
privileges",
in the form of tax breaks and licences granted to commercial interests.
"In theory,
the FCC is supposed to allocate monopoly licences in the
public interest à But in practice, nothing like that happens,"
he adds.
McChesney compares
the FCC's role to a famous scene in the movie 'The
Godfather II', "when Hyman Roth, Michael Corleone and several
other
American gangsters meet on a rooftop in Havana to divide up the
island
between them".
"They do
so by each taking a slice of a cake with the outline of Cuba on
it.. Roth intones, 'Isn't it great to be in a country with a government
that respects private enterprise'."
"They fight
against each other for the biggest slice. The public has no
role in it whatsoever," McChesney says.
But there may
be light on the horizon, he suggests.
The FCC tried
recently to lift a ban on cross-ownership of television
stations and newspapers. But Congress has not yet passed a new rule.
In 2003, millions
of Americans stunned the political establishment by
joining to fight the concentration of media ownership. According
to
McChesney, that signals a "renaissance" of informed public
participation
in media policy-making.
Miren Gutierrez
is IPS Editor in Chief.
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